insure this!

watched the big speech last night. seems like an insurance company bailout. i'm curious as to why we continually reward the bad guy? the banks, and wall st. create a major fiscal disaster, hey, lets pump tons of money in. insurance companies make healthcare simply unattainable for many people, let's mandate more business for em'. ridiculous!

would you not agree that insurance is fully unnecessary? it's a giant, bloated, middle-man, puking money for the fun of it. i do realize that i'm living in a logic driven, fantasy world. i just don't see what's wrong with demanding what's right for us. we've had 8 years of first hand evidence that one side of the political spectrum is fully unable to compromise. it's time for the other side to drop this partisan bs, and start to take absolute steps to ensure that we're not perpetuating the massive problems we've been living with forever.

to me, it seems that if any one of us declines to accept these new insurance rules, we will face a penalty. i don't feel comfortable being forced to support the problem.

besides all this, obama's not the first president to deliver a fiery speech to congress on the topic of healthcare, and i'll be quite surprised to see it all go through anyway.

america voted for change, not to aid the insurance mafia, or to beef up private contractors in iraq, or to bail-out crooks on wall st, or to turn a blind eye to warrantless wiretapping, or to half-step on matters of torture, i'm just not seeing the changes i feel we need to make in order to become powerful purveyors of peace, and justice in our world. watching a room full of pigs, standing, clapping, grunting and groaning, holding up their bogus protest signs, texting, screaming "it's a lie", seems like pure pomp to me. myself, and many of my friends have nothing to do with this, and we most certainly aren't being represented by all this bull. if i had the chance to ask obama one question, it would be along the lines of, "what place do you feel arts, and music hold in a successful society?". we've been left behind! if one was to follow any major societal advance in the history of civilization, they'd notice a correlation in advances in the art world. i know many ultra-talented musicians, fighting for our lives. unfortunately, due to our current setup, we live in a world where one feels trapped into taking bogus jobs, just to make sure that we can receive quality healthcare. the few of us that decide to pursue something culturally relevant, are treated like the scourge of the earth. i would argue that short of teaching, working as a doctor, or scientist; music, and arts are nearly as important. i'm finally seeing this clearly, and quite frankly, i'm upset, and sick of seeking compromise. it's time to start doing things correctly. we all know what's just, and it's time we seek just that.

Awes.

What's really awes is sitting in a circle with eighteen kids, talking about MLK, and Rosa Parks.  Ranks among the most life affirming experiences for this guy.  Stories of their lives, and the unnecessary struggles they faced bewilders their pure minds.  Also, it serves as more proof to my theory that we're all born liberal.  Modern day conservatism is a creation of greed, jealousy, and fear.  I'd love to invite our leaders to spend a week in my classroom.  Just drop their fragile egos, and experience the pure, untainted mind at work.  I'd be willing to bet we'd finally really see change.

Maiden Bloggage

I now have a blog, in which I will blog on.  Within the walls of my little blog area, you, the blog reader, can expect to read blogs about such subjects as: music (performed), music (collected), food, politics, books, nature, teaching (prek/k, drums), and blah blah.  

9:30 am:

Woke up at Sang's house, had the distinct joy of catching up on a couple episodes of The Daily Show, with T Steiner.

11am:

Made moves to retrieve my car with TS.  By happenstance, stumbled upon a bevy of yard sales.  The first three bore no fruit.  Stop number four netted a super sweet, Sankyo CME 660 super 8 video recorder, ten bucks!  I've never had a camera of this nature, and am highly anticipating the birth of my movie making career.  

If you have any experience with these types of motion picture filming devices, do tell.

At our final sale destination, T ball, and I were invited into said salekeep's basement to rummage through their vinyl collection.  I did well, patched up some holes, couple a nice jazz recs:  Stones, Metamorphosis;  Kinks, Live at Kelvin Hall;  Moby Grape, Grape Jam;  Sabbath, Paranoid (I've never owned ANY Sabbath, believe it or not);  Bowie, Aladdin Sane, and some weird boot from Stolkholm, in '79;   Nancy Sinatra, Country, My Way;  Count Basie, E=MC2; Tadd Dameron, Mating Call;  Clifford Brown & Max Roach, At Basin Street;  Helen Merill, S/T;  Sonny Rollins, Three Giants;  Mingus, Moves; and J.J. Johnson, J is for Jazz, all for $2 a piece.  

While T boz was wrapping up his digging quest, I looked upward and saw a pretty, older snare drum.  It turns out to be a '60s blue sparkle Zim-Gar, of Japanese descent.  Not the most sought after drum, but it sounds golden.  Can't wait to get it up in the Serious Business, for a sesh...  At it's current state of tuning, it's sounding to be a primo jazz snare.  With a bit of dampening, it sounds ver niice (I'll be playing it on the 18th, over at Lampost, with Higgins).  

On a day that I started reconsidering jumping back into playing jazz, jazz, ja, jazz, it's really nice to score some cool discs, and a new snare to mess about with.  Thanks, random people that I don't know, and will quite possibly never see again.